Saturday, April 24, 2004
You Always Hurt the One You Love ... the One You Shouldn't Love at All.
Just a note to anyone who doesn't get it:
A man and a woman should not become business partners unless they are married to one another. Any other combination is bad joss all the way around. Because you are starting a new company, you will spend all of your waking hours with someone who is not your spouse. You will laugh together. You will cry together. You will make critical financial and logistical decisions together. You will come to understand each other's hopes, dreams, fears and aspirations. You will gain intimate knowledge of likes and dislikes. You will begin to see common ground. And, if you are married and things are not really wonderful at home, you will begin to yearn for attention and appreciation from someone who REALLY understands you. If you do this for long enough, you are guaranteed to build an unholy bond that will decimate your personal life, your marriage, your business, and all those involved in any aspect of these things.
If you are the married person and you want to do the right thing, you will have to separate yourself completely from your business partner and cling with everything you have to your marriage partner. You will be forced to sell off your half of the business you have worked to build. You will spend hours in personal and marital counselling trying to heal your marriage. You will lay awake at night and fight the yearning to return to your emotional mistress, to re-establish contact, and to allow your heart to go there one more time. You will resent your spouse, and they will resent you. You will have to fight to restore what was destroyed by adulterous thinking. You will be a mess for many, many weeks, fighting depression, remorse, anger and condemnation. You will understand why people used to ask you if your relationship with your business partner was a problem with your spouse.
If you are the single person and you want to do the right thing, you, too will have to separate yourself completely from your business partner. You will have to cling to your God and to your close friends for comfort. You will be forced to make a decision about whether or not you want to continue the business. You will wonder what you are going to do now that this person who was so integral to the business and to your life is gone. You will lay awake at night fighting the frustration of wanting something you can never have, and fighting the craving for something that you know is forbidden. You will resent the person you once thought of as invaluable, and you will be forced to confront the fact that you did not guard your heart. You will be a mess for many, many weeks, fighting depression, remorse, anger and condemnation. You will understand why people used to ask you if your business partner was your spouse, and why that was wrong.
In time, you will see that God is faithful, your sins are forgiven, and you will go on to success and restoration. But it will be a long, long road.
A man and a woman should not become business partners unless they are married to one another. Any other combination is bad joss all the way around. Because you are starting a new company, you will spend all of your waking hours with someone who is not your spouse. You will laugh together. You will cry together. You will make critical financial and logistical decisions together. You will come to understand each other's hopes, dreams, fears and aspirations. You will gain intimate knowledge of likes and dislikes. You will begin to see common ground. And, if you are married and things are not really wonderful at home, you will begin to yearn for attention and appreciation from someone who REALLY understands you. If you do this for long enough, you are guaranteed to build an unholy bond that will decimate your personal life, your marriage, your business, and all those involved in any aspect of these things.
If you are the married person and you want to do the right thing, you will have to separate yourself completely from your business partner and cling with everything you have to your marriage partner. You will be forced to sell off your half of the business you have worked to build. You will spend hours in personal and marital counselling trying to heal your marriage. You will lay awake at night and fight the yearning to return to your emotional mistress, to re-establish contact, and to allow your heart to go there one more time. You will resent your spouse, and they will resent you. You will have to fight to restore what was destroyed by adulterous thinking. You will be a mess for many, many weeks, fighting depression, remorse, anger and condemnation. You will understand why people used to ask you if your relationship with your business partner was a problem with your spouse.
If you are the single person and you want to do the right thing, you, too will have to separate yourself completely from your business partner. You will have to cling to your God and to your close friends for comfort. You will be forced to make a decision about whether or not you want to continue the business. You will wonder what you are going to do now that this person who was so integral to the business and to your life is gone. You will lay awake at night fighting the frustration of wanting something you can never have, and fighting the craving for something that you know is forbidden. You will resent the person you once thought of as invaluable, and you will be forced to confront the fact that you did not guard your heart. You will be a mess for many, many weeks, fighting depression, remorse, anger and condemnation. You will understand why people used to ask you if your business partner was your spouse, and why that was wrong.
In time, you will see that God is faithful, your sins are forgiven, and you will go on to success and restoration. But it will be a long, long road.
